By Ed Halter February 19, 2002

It's hard to even envision a world without Blockbuster and camcorders, 100 channels of cable TV, Jumbotron billboards, digital cinema, or streaming mediaa world before the distracting array of mesmerizing tech developed during the last two decades of hyperactive consumer culture. Prior to the '80s, video wasn't rare, exactly, but its only visible manifestation was the wood-paneled monolith of broadcast television. Art history apocrypha claims that the first challenge to TV's cultural monopoly appeared at the moment of Nam June Paik's purchase of a Portapak in 1965. Entranced by the novelty of artist-made television and the futuristic exhortations of Marshall McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller, underground filmmakers like Andy Warhol, Scott Bartlett, and Jud Yalkut soon began incorporating psychedelic video feedback into their works. The end results, however, were almost... More >>>